The Birth of Football

Association Football has for many decades been more than a game, it’s culture has now spread across all continents of the globe to become a multi-billion dollar business which is followed by a significant proportion of the world’s population. It is arguably the most significant human phenomenon of the modern age that transcends national, cultural, and religious boundaries and to provides a common bond across much of humanity. On Parker’s Piece, Cambridge football first became football put skill above force and forbade players to catch and run with the ball. These rules produced a game that was as much a pleasing spectacle, as it was a sporting pursuit; a combination that was above all else responsible for game’s subsequent appeal this was the game adopted by the Football Association. To chart football’s birth Malcolm Walker takes us on a globe-trotting tour that spans the complete history of humankind and ends in a messy birth in an upstairs room in a London pub in 1863. It’s not pretty and it’s not beautiful.